board77

The Last Homely Site on the Web

Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm

Post Reply   Page 1 of 1  [ 11 posts ]
Author Message
MariaHobbit
Post subject: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 2:07 pm
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 8041
Joined: Thu 03 Feb , 2005 2:39 pm
Location: MO
 
Yesterday I had adventures with cattle…

When I got home from work, I saw immediately that the three adult cattle had gotten into the hayfield somehow. I changed clothes and headed out and saw they’d broken the wire that held the gate closed and were happily munching the much nicer grass there. The two heifers couldn’t join them, because they are in a different paddock right now, to protect them from getting bred too young.

Anyway, I called the cows and the two females came running and I put some hay out for them. They thought that was a lousy idea and went back to the yummy grass. So I got some oats for them and they came again, but Charley, the bull, wouldn’t come.

So I took my cow coercion instrument and walked out into the hayfield with him and tried to shoo him back into the paddock with the cows. I tapped him with the whip on the flanks and poked him in the face when he didn’t move. He lowered his head and pawed the ground once at me.
Now Charley is pretty mild mannered for a bull, but he IS a bull and weighs over 1000 pounds. I decided not to force the issue at the moment and wait until he’d had his fill of grass. So I walked the fence line and made sure there were no trees down on it and it was as secure as the last time we let them out (i.e.: not very) As long as there aren’t cattle on the other side it’s an OK fence, but a determined bull could break through at several places just by leaning on rotten posts.

However, there ARE cattle on two other sides right now. Lots of lovely cows with no rival bulls to be seen. I got back to the barn and started working on putting up a mineral block holder and kept an eye on our cattle. Eventually Charley evidently had his fill of grass and meandered over to the west side of the field and called the neighbors cows to him. I could see them clustered around him across the fence, and then saw some of them attempting to mount each other. Oh, crap! They must be in heat!

I couldn’t take the pickup out into the field. The recent rain would have that truck stuck in no time. I pondered getting the riding lawn mower out, but wasn’t even sure it would start. It wouldn’t provide enough protection from an angry bull in any case. Then my eye fell on the large John Deere tractor. THAT would do it! I went in the house and got the tractor key and then loaded up a cattle panel onto the bucket of the tractor and headed through the cow paddock (dropping the panel off by the busted gate) and out into the hayfield. I tried to stay on the high spots to keep from tearing up the grass, but I occasionally had to cut through mucky areas.

I finally got to the far end where Charley was drooling over the lovely females. And I mean literally drooling. I drove right up to him and almost touched him with the bucket of the front loader before he deigned to move. OK- this wasn’t going to do. I stood up on the tractor, leaned out over the hood and swung the whip down as hard as I could and tagged him on the butt. He jumped and moved away. I followed with the tractor. Now let me explain about this whip I have. It isn’t a long bullwhip like Indiana Jones carried. Not only do we not have one of those, but I wouldn’t be able to snap it anyway. It takes a bit of skill, I believe. No, the whip we have is left over from our horse keeping days. It has a long stiff portion about five feet long and a swingy rope section another 5 feet long. Its meant for getting a horse to run around you on a lunge line and to keep them going when they slow down. In other words, it’s kinda short for what I was doing.

But it worked, after a fashion. I could only tag the bull with it when I was almost touching him with the tractor bucket. We went back and forth across the west end of the field for a bit, with him getting angrier and angrier, but there wasn’t much he could do about it with me up on the high seat of the tractor. Finally I remembered the whooping and yelling I’d heard the neighbors doing when they moved their cattle, so I tried screaming at him.

That got him to move off the west end. But he moved to the NORTH fence line, which is full of trees and stuff, and the fence wire is in much worse condition than the west fence. He started bellowing and calling the cows in the north field to him. ACK! So then I really started shrieking at him, but he ignored me, because the tractor wasn’t coming closer. Fine. OK. This was NOT going to happen! I was not going to lose my bull through the fence to some other herd of cattle and have to go get help from the neighbors in separating him out again. My husband is gone, you see, on a conference for his job. That’s why I’m doing all this stuff alone….

So, I raised the bucket of the front loader and tipped it until it resembled the front blade of a bulldozer and started shoving my way through the low branches and small saplings, screaming like a mad woman with the tractor revved as loud as it would go. With tree branches snapping and the tractor louder than ever, Charley’s nerve broke and he headed away from the north fence.

He tried to cut around me to get back to the west fence, but I was no longer being careful about tearing up the grass of the hay field, and I sped to cut him off. He headed east and north and got back in the north fence line, but I crashed through some more trees and he gave up. He rejoined his two cows and together they hightailed it back into their paddock. (And I never before knew that is a literal term! All their tails were held very, very high as they ran- in one case up over her back!)

They stayed away from the gate while I tied it back into place with baling twine and then put another cattle panel in front of that one and tied it to different posts. Charley eyed the tractor with distrust as he came up, but didn’t seem to bear me any ill will after our adventures. Just to be sure, I stayed on the other side of the tractor from him, but when I drove it back to the other gate, he just moved to the gate/cattle panel combo and stood there staring into the west. Stupid lovesick bovine! I admit, those were some awfully pretty heifers, but I doubt their owners would thank me for getting them bred to a different bull than they meant to.

So much of our language is farm related. I enjoy finding out new depths of meaning in old turns of phrase. Now I know the full meaning of being “bullheaded.”

_________________


.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 2:17 pm
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
Offline
 
Posts: 21758
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 3:46 pm
 
:LMAO: Oh my word. I'm glad you didn't get hurt, and I'm glad Charley didn't succeed in his amorous adventures! (Well, I feel a bit sorry for him, but I know the neighbors would not appreciate him impregnating their females without their permission.)

_________________

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
vison
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 2:21 pm
Best friends forever
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 6546
Joined: Fri 04 Feb , 2005 4:49 am
 
The deliights of keeping a bull!!!

Well, all's well that ends well. Good work, MariaHobbit!!!

At one time the law here was that if you kept a bull you had to have 6 strand barb-wire fences. I mean, 6 rows of wire, not the usual three or four. We haven't kept a bull for years, our last bull died in a tragic skating accident.

_________________

Living on Earth is expensive,
but it does include a free trip
around the sun every year.


Top
Profile Quote
MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 2:36 pm
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 8041
Joined: Thu 03 Feb , 2005 2:39 pm
Location: MO
 
A skating accident???

There aren't any laws here about the sort of fences one must keep a bull behind. Just laws about liability if your livestock causes damage if they get out. And all the fences in the hayfield would keep Charley in just fine, except that ancient north fence. So, we've been very careful to only let our cows out into that pasture when there are no cattle in adjacent fields. He's really very good about fences, but those teasing young heifers are really just too much! We did have him in the paddock our heifers are in now last summer, and that is against that old north fence- but we reinforced the weak parts and added electric wire on BOTH sides of the fence-- there was too much antagonism between the two bulls on either side of the fence. So we put a hot wire high on the neighbor's side for their humungous Angus bull and a lower hot wire for our smaller Lowline Angus bull on our side. That worked fine until the fence charger burned out. By then, though, they were all conditioned to leave the fence alone so we didn't bother replacing it that summer.

We'll have to get another one this year, once the neighbors turn the bulls in with their cows. *sigh*

_________________


.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 2:43 pm
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
Offline
 
Posts: 21758
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 3:46 pm
 
A skating accident???


(Okay, I am now picturing a bull with a scarf, toque, and ice skates on. There might be a hockey puck in there, too, since we're talking about a Canadian bull.)

_________________

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
vison
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 4:25 pm
Best friends forever
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 6546
Joined: Fri 04 Feb , 2005 4:49 am
 
The bull was a registered Shorthorn whose everyday name was Walter, after the man we bought him from. Registered cattle are required to have a name including the year's "letter", so a bull in an A year could be called Alfred's Great Thundering Whatsit, depending on the name of HIS sire, if you follow me. But Walter was a W year and we bought him from Walter and so there you are.

We had a pretty bad cold spell and the dugout at the back of our place was frozen. The cattle had water at the barn but maybe Walter wanted something else, and he went out on the ice, he got all the way across but right at the other side (only about 25 - 30 feet) he slipped and fell and landed on his chest on a sharp stump that poked up out of the ice and that was the end of Walter. We lost a skating cow another year, even though by then the dugout was securely fenced off, a snowdrift was over the fence and this stupid beast clambered over the snowdrift, got onto the ice, and fell, breaking her pelvis. Horrid. We had to shoot her and then drag her body back to the barn. Since we knew when and how she had died we could use the meat for feed, but butchering a big animal is no joke, it's a huge job and on top of all the other work we have in a cold spell, it was very frustrating.

When I remember this stuff, I realize why we don't keep many cattle any more. Right now we have none. The man who cuts our hay wants to pasture his beasts at the back and I'll buy a steer from him, or a half, in the fall. The dugout is gone now, pretty much, over the years it has filled in and the water level dropped, besides. Still, it has that big strong fence around it.

We had a lot of cow adventures over the years. Once our neighbours kept a Holstein bull, I have no clue why, they had about 4 crappy Holstein heifers (they weren't dairy farmers, they were trying to make a buck keeping springers) and should have been using A-I, but they had this ridiculous bull. At the time I had given up keeping a bull (because of Walter) but still had my little herd of registered Shorthorns. Their stupid bloody bull got into our field with my cows and so when he came in with them that night we penned him up. We waited. A WEEK went by and these people still had not done anything about their bull. They didn't phone to see if we'd seen him, they didn't go out looking for him. I phoned and left a message on their machine and waited another WEEK and nothing happened, and so we castrated him. And another week went by and finally one Sunday morning they walked across the field to get their bull.

The guy was severely cheezed off that his bull had been castrated and he started getting stroppy with me and I lost my temper and said if he wanted me to get the Burdizzos out and deal with him, too, I would be happy to. Can you flaming imagine? Miserable little jerk. When I asked them what the hell took them 3 weeks, and never even a phone call? No answer. My fingers were getting itchy for that set of chromed Burdizzos, I can tell you.

They were the kind of neighbours that proved, over and over again, that old adage: good fences make good neighbours. We had to look after the whole line fence, since they never did anything with their half. They were feckless and lazy and we were glad when they moved. Then we got our present neighbour, and he is, as they say, as queer as Dick's hatband, and I don't mean "gay", I mean peculiar. Still, we have lived in amity, more or less, for a number of years. I could write about him for pages, but will refrain.

_________________

Living on Earth is expensive,
but it does include a free trip
around the sun every year.


Top
Profile Quote
MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 5:40 pm
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 8041
Joined: Thu 03 Feb , 2005 2:39 pm
Location: MO
 
vison wrote:
...and I lost my temper and said if he wanted me to get the Burdizzos out and deal with him, too, I would be happy to.
:LMAO: OMG! I'd have given a lot to see you telling him that! :LMAO:

_________________


.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
BrianIsSmilingAtYou
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Tue 31 Mar , 2009 8:19 pm
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 1225
Joined: Wed 21 Sep , 2005 2:38 am
Location: Philadelphia
 
Great stuff ladies!

_________________

[ img ]

My niece, Humera, under a pumpkin leaf!


Top
Profile Quote
yovargas
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Wed 01 Apr , 2009 3:40 am
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 14774
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 12:11 pm
 
Darn, Maria, I wish there'd been video of all this! ;) It'd at least be cool to have diagrams and such. :D


Top
Profile Quote
LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Wed 01 Apr , 2009 3:46 am
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
Offline
 
Posts: 21758
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 3:46 pm
 
Yes, diagrams! :cow:


vison, that is sad about Walter. :( There are two songs on one of my Great Big Sea CD's that are about horses falling through the ice and dying. They're from Newfoundland. :suspicious: I'm detecting a definite connection between Canada and large animals having skating accidents.

_________________

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Bullheadedness and other tales from the farm
Posted: Wed 01 Apr , 2009 3:37 pm
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 8041
Joined: Thu 03 Feb , 2005 2:39 pm
Location: MO
 
I think I've seen it all, now.

I've mentioned before that our little sheep will chase off our rat terriers. I spent considerable time and energy convincing Kira, our 10 month old rat terrier, that she was NEVER to even think about chasing sheep.

However, the mama sheep chases Kira away every time she gets close.

Yesterday, the fat little black lamb started chasing Kira. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen. I think Kira gets close just so she can get chased by them. :LMAO: The mama will drop off the chase after a little bit, but the little lamb will continue bounding across the yard after the dog. I have GOT to get this on video! :D

I'm considering naming the lamb "Ninja".....

_________________


.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
Display: Sort by: Direction:
Post Reply   Page 1 of 1  [ 11 posts ]
Return to “The Turf”
Jump to: